Arthroscopic Rotator Cuff Repair Using a Cable Suture-Bridge Technique

Rotator cuff tear is one of the most common diseases in sports medicine, and arthroscopic anchor suture and knotting are the main treatment. However, poor tendon-bone healing or retear after surgery remains the main challenge in rotator cuff repair. Herein, we describe a technique for arthroscopic repair of rotator cuff tear: "cable-bridge" suture. This is a rotator cuff repair technique based on the biomechanical concept of the rotator cuff cable and on the principle of bridge suture. First, different knots of medial row anchors are locked with each other to form a main cable similar to the rotator cuff structure. The sutures are cross-linked and fixed with the lateral row anchors to form a "crossed-bridge" cable structure. The medial row suture locking plus lateral row bridge fixation enables all sutures to form a single overall structure like a cable bridge, achieving an optimized mechanical distribution at the tendon-bone interface, forming a continuous compression band at the tendon-bone interface, evenly distributing the tension, reducing single-point stress concentration, and converting linear tension into circular pressure, which is similar to the principle of the cable bridge, with improved surgical reliability.